We've moved!!

Hey everyone!! We've moved the blog to wordpress. Eventually we would like to grow to having a few blogs, for different parts of our lives. Wordpress is much better suited for that. So here is the new url:

http://justinandcaroline.wordpress.com/

Change your RSS feeds or subscriptions or followings or bookmarks or however you read this blog. We'll see you on the new blog!!

Cravings

I gotta say, pregnancy can REALLY change your taste buds. I have been on a sweet corn kick. For some reason, that organic frozen sweet corn with a little earth balance on it is heaven. Mmm.... At least the craving is no longer ice cream!

My Takei

Takei is my kitty. He follows me around everywhere. I had to take a few pictures of him today to show where he follows me. I love my kitty.

This is what I woke up to this morning (yep, his tongue is sticking out):

This is what I see when I get out of the shower:

He likes to roll around on the floor (yep, tongue out again):

I try to get on the computer, but he thinks that's cat time:

Busy, busy, busy...

Oh my gosh, I know it's been a long time. I need to update everyone on what's going on, though. I've been really busy. For about 2 weeks, I was staying with some friends of ours here in Fort Collins, Sharon and Jamie. They are awesome people, and so much fun to live with!! I had the opportunity to stay longer with them, but I needed to find our own place. The sooner I could get settled in and get my cats from Charlie (my brother), the better. So I found a great 2 bedroom place on the NW side of town. It is bright, sunny, and has a great feel to it. I am loving it already. The past two weekends were spent moving stuff out of storage and into the new place. The weekend before last was also New West Fest in Old Town. That was so much fun. Lots of good music, food, and vendors. The belly dancers were mesmerizing.

So now everything is moved in and mostly unpacked. Every day I get closer to having it the way I want it. I have been working at my previous job in the preschool. I'm spending every morning (4 days a week) cooking for 60 kiddos. It is a good job. I am riding my bike to and from work, about 5 miles round trip. I don't do it all week, because my boss is great about letting me borrow a van if I need to.

I found a great midwife. She is an apprentice for another midwife, so we actually get two midwives at the birth. They have an assistant as well, Lia. Lia is taking a course to become a Labor Doula, and our birth will be one of her certification births. My last appointment with Kim (the midwife), Lia and Lynette (the second midwife) were there. It was great to have all of them together. Kim also has a portable jacuzzi that we will be renting from her for our waterbirth. I'm so excited for that!!

So other than biking and working and going to appointments (midwife, chiropractor, dentist, etc.), I've been just trying to relax and take it easy. Lots of warm baths and reading. Just got internet set up a few days ago, so I've been catching up on emails and talking to people.

The baby is VERY active still. He doesn't have enough room to get a good kick in, but he stretches a lot. Both the midwife and the chiropractor say he is in the perfect position. I really think that the Hypnobirthing visualizations and affirmations helped, as well as stretches from spinningbabies.com.

I am so grateful to have such wonderful friends. They have done so much for me in the past month. So everyone who has helped me move, let me crash with them, and given me support, THANK YOU.

A good friend of mine, lisa, and her beautiful dog Clementine are on their way to my door right now to stay the night. I think I will go prepare for them!! Take a look at our flickr for some pics of the new place (still a little rough though).

The weekend so far.

I went to Tim's promotion breakfast Friday. It was pretty cool but I felt really out of place. I was just about the only one there not in uniform and I was the only civilian. I know this because Tim knows this. Tim also happens to know that a few of the higher ranking people were extremely concered about my earrings. My earrings are slightly gauged you see. 14 or 16 gauge, I think. They were trying to figure out whose outfit I was in. :P Pretty funny to me. I knew it was going to happen eventually. I'm surprised something like it hasn't happened sooner in fact. I keep wondering when some officer is gonna come up to me and give me crap about not having shaved or some such. It was a good time. Afterwards, I hung out with Tim and our friend Mike. Good times. Today I also hung out with Tim and roleplayed. Much fun was had. Afterwards, we went to Sunghye's and she made some dinner for us. Very delicious Kimbap. Kimbap is kind of like sushi but sometimes they use ham and various other things you would never see in Japanese sushi. Generally good though. We watched "The Rocker." Fun movie. Pretty predictable but a good time for sure. It has Rainn Wilson in it. He plays Dwight on the office if you didn't know. Hilarious actor. Check it out if you get the chance.

Mudfest!

I've got some pictures now so it's time to post about mudfest and last weekend in general. Here's the cliffnotes. Friday was a school sponsored "field trip" for the foriegn teachers to the DMZ (demilitarized zone), followed by one of th palaces and shopping in Insadong. Also a call to wish my wonderful wife a happy birthday :) Saturday meant getting up early to catch a bus to Boryeong and Mudfest. Sunday morning and afternoon in Boryeong with the night reserved for unwinding and recovery. Now for the details.

The those who dont know, the DMZ is the area between North and South Korea. It's a thin strip of land between the two where, excepting certain heavily watched roads, neither army goes and nothing is built (though apparently the whole thing is filled with mines). Its kind of crazy. Each side has various things just across the border. For instance North Korea has a "propaganda village" which means a nice tidy perfect looking little village with a huge flag pole and accompanying flag. South Korea on the other hand has tourist facilities. Shows the contrast between the two quite nicely doesn't it? There were a ton of restrictions on pictures sadly so we dont have any good shots. Part of this trip was getting to go into the "3rd invasion tunnel." The North Koreans are pretty determined it seems. They've dug three tunnels that we know of across the DMZ and possibly more. Of the three that have found two are now tourist attractions. It was a steep 11% incline down to the actually tunnel. We wore hardhats in the tunnel because of the low ceilings. Melissa was short enough it didn't really matter but Aaron and I would have been in a world of hurt without them. We each bumped our heads at least ten times. Afterward the field trip was supposed to go to one of the palaces followed by shopping in Insadong but the weather was really crappy. So a lot of people, including my little expeditionary group, opted out. Instead we went to Namdaemun. Namdaemun is the primary shopping center for the country. It is also the site of a burnt down national teasure. Seems "The South Gate", from whence the area got its name, was burnt down by a disgruntled citizen. See in Korea land is a huge and solid investment. This citizen invested a lot in land then had the government forcibly buy it out from under him at a fraction of its worth ruining him. He decided the correct nswer was to burn down a 600+ year old national treasure. I kinda can't blame him but I bet the jail time has made him reconsider his position on the matter. Len really wanted to check out some camera stores and Namdaemun has a camera district. We did so then vacated the premises and made our way to the much loved Smokey Saloon for burgers. This was a trickier than usual proposition due to a torrential downpour. The trade off was no line to get our burgers for once. I accepted this trade, ate burger, then headed home. Now Saturday was going to be a long day. In order to catch the bus to Mudfest we were going to have to get up at about 5 am. Instead of doing that we all opted for early naps at our respective home followed by getting up at 1am and hanging out until it was time to go then trying to catch some zzz's on the bus. Great Success!

After catching our bus then sleeping on it we found ourselves at the Boryeong mud flats. They gave us some snacks and free beer (mine was passed on to Aaron). We went and played for a bit on the well packed mud flats before being called in to change into some camo pants and long sleeved shirts. The whole time they were pumping some pretty crappy music out at us. I'm pretty sure they played "Toxic" by Britney Spear at least four times. Not sure if they were trying to tell us something or not. We got changed but missed the beginning activity; all the guys split into two teams and tryed to toss each other out of a "ring" defined by a rope. Kinda sad I missed it. The next activity was a game of mud rugby. The girls had their own seperate rugby game. It was a good time for sure. I did alright when I had the energy to do anything. I wore out pretty quickly. Afterwards we built me an impressive mud hump. No pics though, far too muddy for a camera. Though the Adventure Korea (the company I went through) people had cameramen wandering and they took pics. They may even be up on their website at some point. We built a mud castle but it's was pretty pitiful for the amount of work we had to put in. Afterwards we showered and reloaded onto the bus to hit Boryeong proper. The rest of the night was spent dinking around town and exploring. Our hotel was right next to the beach so it was quite beautiful. Then sleep.

We had until about 4pm to do as we wished. Despite it being mudfest and many mud related activities being available, we all decided we'd much rather play in the ocean and on the beach. We found a spot to set our towels out and the rented a couple inner tubes. Aaron and I spent a bunch of time playing around in the water while Mel relaxed up on the beach. Mostly we swam out past the breaks, got up into our tubes, and relaxed until the swells dragged us far enough in for the waves to break. Then we tried to catch the biggest and best break and ride it into shore so we could do it all over again. Mel joined us for a bit before going off in search of some lunch for us all.

After lunch we began the greatest achievement of the weekend. Our sandcastle! Heck yeah sandcastle. We just kind of went for it since we lacked the tools of true sand artists but we sure had a fun time! Mel made it lok all pretty and Aaron and I did the grunt work.

Good times. The trip home was more bus and more sleeping. It was a weekend to be remembered for sure. It was so nice to play in the ocean. I only wish we hadn't been surrounded by a thousand+ other people. Well worth the price, which included a wicked sunburn. I'm mostly recovered now and ready to tackle my 29th birthday weekend!

Home for keeps

Ok, so if you haven't figured it out from the last two posts, or you didn't already know, Justin is coming home soon. And I am back for good. I figured we should make an actual announcement. We hadn't really decided whether it should be on the blog or not, but now we have.

Korea isn't really our thing. We had (and Justin's still having) fun. We are so glad that we did go. The experience was amazing. But we are ready to be home. We had some stress and issues with housing and the school Justin works for. Plus, everyone is pretty upset about N. Korea. Since I had already decided to come home for the wedding, we just planned on me not going back.

We don't have much of a plan yet, but it will work out. We'll be looking for jobs and living simply. I'll be staying with family until he gets back. It is so good to be here. I know we made the right decision.